Acoustics

Acoustics is the subject where two trades meet that otherwise have nothing to do with each other: the structural engineer who calculates el aislamiento, and the sound engineer who listens to la reverberación. The words are the same and the aims are not. Eighth on the list stands one word that English took from Latin twice. El espectro is the picture of which frequencies a sound is made of — and it is also the ghost, the thing that appears at night. English borrowed the Latin once for the physicist, « a spectrum », and once for the haunting, « a spectre », and the two have not recognised each other since. Spanish kept a single word doing both jobs, which is why a Spanish speaker still hears the image that English spent two spellings hiding: something that shows itself without having a body.